Dreams

Some people make money translating dreams for other people who have had them and worry, or might hope for signs. I'll propose that prostitution isn't really the oldest profession. Guys had to dream about hookers who dreamed of being rich. Who really knows? It's a variation of the "what came first" saw, "chickens or eggs?"

Dreams have been a part of unconscious consciousness from before we can remember. Someone with an eye for profit gained from useless material will write a best-seller biography of dreams. The source is unreliable, I'm sure, because authors are forced to grapple with honesty with every word they write. Personally, I've had countless dreams and I find them too vague to chronicle especially since there's nothing episodical about them. "Continued tomorrow at the same time: Chapter 873". Maybe someone else says he can do it, but I would suspect some intellectual dishonesty afoot. It's not presumptuous to say that if I can't do it, no one can. Rather, the records — or lack of them — affirm my view.

Literature is abundant with references to dreams. People are impressed when great weight is attributed to "meanings," things that are affected by the gift of special visitations to people who are important. They have no monopoly. People have dreamed of lottery numbers, sports results and omens that might be fulfilled if they take a certain course. My observation is that yesterday 8,010,227 people had dreams with critical "meanings." Most of them revealing the winning number were played today. Tomorrow there will be seven big winners and about twenty-three thousand pittance winners. Several thousand losers didn't bet. They had the right numbers but didn't pursue their dream.

All of this prattle about the effectiveness of dreams is like the law of averages of things happening. Put 8,010,227 chimpanzees in front of typewriters and have them smack the keys. One of them might type the Gettysburg Address.

One of our earliest memories is at bedside. Some of us knelt by the counterpane and said bedtime prayers. "God bless mommy and daddy and our "hated" sister and a litany of relatives." Simple protestants were teaching their children to say "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." You bet!

When we were tucked in, mommy would say "Sweet dreams." I've never had a nightmare. I had sweet dreams. Someone should make a survey of kids who have had nightmares. Maybe they'll indict their mommys. "Have a nightmare, you little bastard," is what I bet they said to their little tykes under the blankets.

My survey says that my dreams are usually related to thoughts or deeds occurring late in the day. I might have a split-second flash of something or someone and it goes to work when I'm asleep.

Jottings

There are times when I think I should write down last night's dream. As vivid as dreams seem, I'm unable to chronicle hardly any of them. Maybe that's the way things should be, otherwise these non-events might find themselves replacing history.

Ancient peoples put a lot of importance in dreams. They got experts to interpret them. The fate of nations might have rested on disquieting nightmares that followed a badly cooked meal. Other peoples dreams have been chased after by astrologers, shamins, wizards and specialists in gypsy camps and more lately by psychologists. Why not? Look at the exposure that gives people some serious pause: literature, the bible, songs, television, mommy's adjunctum at the bedside.

I've liked my dreams. They're entertainment. I don't ever recall waking up screaming. I don't ever recall having a nightmare. I hear people continuously haunted by bad dreams. That's a pity. Maybe they should move to a more comfortable bed or another neighborhood.

If a boy saw a train, he'd watch it until it was gone from view. Count the cars. "Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one...." Some had eighty, ninety, or more. He'd wave to the workmen in the caboose. If they acknowledged, he'd feel good. He'd feel important.

On some days the clouds in the sky took forms. Imagination helped as one image changed into another. If he was with a pal or two they would exchange notes. They might influence each other's opinion. A small argument was possible.

Moving water has a singular fascination. A brook, a stream, a creek, even the rainwater running along the curb to the end of the street has a hypnotic allure. Small journeys are made on the surface by leaves, or sticks or matchboxes. It all flows away to a distant ocean to companion with ocean liners and battleships.

Poets have immortalized all of these marvelous things that catch the eyes of little boys and hold them in rapt suspension from other plans. They'll not be distracted easily. "Ronnie! Yo! Earth to Ronnie..."

I didn't hear them. I was busy watching society at work. What a curiosity are the ants. I observed them from a position of strength and the disposition of Attila. My whim could wipe them out. Even the ants don't escape the poet's eye. Robert Service knew our barbarian potential and suggested the ants might be our betters. We observe them and when we lose patience we can't walk away. We prefer to squash them or boil their colony with hot water.

We'll build a castle on the beach by the water. We rank our work with Howett and Cram and Furness and Sullivan and McKim, Meade and White. But they didn't design their buildings on foundations of sand where tidal-waves were expected. No matter. Our dreams are made to be washed away and leave nothing.

"Wadda y'wanna be when you grow up?"

Before that was considered seriously there was the expected list: a fireman (because we could wear the neat hat and ring the bell and ride on the big engine with the firehouse dog), a soldier (with purpose I might note because we could kill Japs and Nazis), a cowboy (to kill indians), a cop (to kill crooks). Ask a kid what he wants to be when he grows up and you'll see there are a lot of things that he doesn't want to be on that list later on.

Mr. Wilkins owned a gasoline station. I hung around there when I was little. I made a model gas-station out of a shoebox. I reckoned that his gasoline (Esso) was the best because Mr. Wilkins chose it to sell.

When the contractors tore up Washington Lane I watched in absolute awe. I tore up a piece of our yard and built a miniature copy of Washington Lane.

A lot of my toys were used to act out little fantasies of what I might be later in life. For the moment I was a pilot or a ship-captain or a race-car driver or a knight or the commander of lead soldiers, but, only for a moment.

When the time came for a serious look at the list the school provided to aid us in vocational direction we were supposed to tick-off the ones we felt attracted to. We were in eighth grade and I was twelve and was expected to make responsible decisions.

I looked at the list. There was no course to prepare me to be a baseball star. That was just a dream. I thought that I would like to be an architect. I dreamed of being the best architect in the world.

Kids never dream of being second banana.

I took to day-dreaming when things got boring for some reason or another. I'm looking out the window. Windows competed with teachers. That's a bad sign. There was action everywhere and I was drawn away from the drone of authority, of structured stuff, of rote, of discipline. There's a time and place to avert eyes, but not in school, and certainly not in a lot of other places, either.

It wasn't my fault. I remembered the Bible readings in the mornings. "And Filbah appeared to Yesagg in a dream when he had gone down to Mirab-Yabadoo." I remembered the Stephen Foster songs we were taught in school: "Camptown races...doo-dah, doo-dah!" and "I dream of Jeannie with the light brown hair..." I'm looking out the window over the rooftops of Germantown and looking for Jeannie.

At night all of the clutter would be swept away: the good things, the crises, the mundane. We might fall asleep from exhaustion. Or, we might pass over to the influence of Wynkin' and Blynkin' and Nod with a sigh. We do go there. It's part of the program and the next day we're up and at it again.

If anyone has read Robert Louis Stevenson's "A Child's Garden of Verses," he's got a helluva book. It's a marvelous handbook for childhood, better stuff than Heidi or Penrod or Daddy's Room-mate (something new for first graders). It was a book of realities. Others were adventures that we could not quite share. Like voyeurs, we could glimpse at little actions going to happen when we picked up books, and again when we picked up the books again. Whose actions? Certainly not ours, just fiction not related to stuff like biographies and histories and "A Child's Garden of Verses."

At night the sandman came and carried a bag of dreams.

The Prophecy

1949

I flushed the toilet. My ablutions were completed when I noticed that the toilet was erupting. That's the best way I can describe it. Really, it seems indescribable. And disgusting. An unabated surge of everything dumped into it since the house was built was now coming back up and spilling into the bathroom. Honest!

My next move was into the hall. I closed the bathroom door and stood at the stairway. The door bulged. Then it popped and I fled to the first floor. The mess oozed down the steps. My next reaction was stupid. Instead of fleeing to the street I ran into the cellar. The weight above began to bend the beams in the basement. I escaped seconds before everything collapsed. Filled with panic I fled into the yard, got on my bicycle and pedaled away.

It didn't take long to get to Fort Washington Avenue and Susquehanna Road out near Wentz's farm and a long way from home. I can still show those who are interested where I stood and observed the catastrophe from a safe distance. To my south, Philadelphia was buried under a pile of shit.

The following day I related these things to Bill Pira. Maybe I told the wrong guy.

I had the same dream again — later that year. "I flushed the toilet. My ablutions...." and Philadelphia was again buried under a pile of shit.

What a queer dream! But then, dreams tend to be odd blips, anyway. I can't recall many repeat performances of adventures in the land of Nod. I've heard rumors about falling and if you dreamed of falling and you landed, you would die. Who the hell came up with that one?

People with credentials might get a PhD for writing about dreams. If Charlie Applerot writes a paper, he's a candidate. If Ernie Wazisname has a PhD already, he might go a step beyond what earned him his doctorate. With his established background , lesser stuff from his pen might be hailed for its origin rather than its content. Ah! If I wrote, word for word, the same papers (instead of them), I'd have no one to present them to. Examiners forced to read them would likely dismiss them as rubbish. My sanity might be challenged.

Anyway, how much can a writer compose on personal dreams?

How accurate is the narrative? Exaggeration might be essential to gain attention.

It's apparently impossible to write dream-biographs. Authors of note don't write about dreams.

I heard in a much later time that Hillary Clinton was visited in dreams by Eleanor Roosevelt. The long dead First Lady gave Madame President advice and direction for the benefit of us all. The old woman was dead long before Hillary got serious about affairs-of-state. But there's precedent for that sort of revelation and those in support of the Clinton approach to things of value were inspired. Detractors called her a nut.

Her husband told potential voters only the year before that he talked with Elvis. Hillary's conversations seem more plausible to me. If I believed I had little chats with Karl Marx or Marco Polo I might lose some existing friendships. Credentials count.

They do! You've got to have some wider respect if you expect to get attention that will aid your cause. You have to hang around the right gang. When I dreamed of Philadelphia buried under a pile of shit I was only fifteen and my gang was some kids that people in Idaho and Alabama and Vermont would never know. Kids at fifteen, unless they are kings crowned early or heads of religions in primitive societies don't count. If I had revealed my dream to the Ministry of Dreams, precautions would have been taken and Philadelphia and a lot of other cities would have been saved. If I lived in ancient Egypt and had the ear of Pharoah he would have avoided a lot of trouble with Moses.

Madame Clinton takes her dreams seriously. Her mate, I suspect, was trying to grab a few million votes from those who believe Elvis is alive and tending bar in Omaha or hiding out in a lumber camp somewhere. Hitler put a lot of stock in dreams and made some pretty serious moves by them. As for me, I've relegated things to a more reasonable perspective and even at fifteen I could distinguish between things that were happening when I was awake and stuff that's flushed away when I wake up.